HCG & weight loss - again!!

I just got a call yesterday from some supplier trying to sell me HCG drops to prescribe to gullible unsuspecting patients. When I told her I did not believe HCG caused any weight loss, she chided me & told me that lots of other doctors are prescribing it. Well, I'm not part of that group & here's a bit of free advice for everyone out there desperate to lose weight - it's not the homeopathic dose of HCG that makes you lose weight, it's the 500cal/day diet that you have to stick to as part of the "HCG programme" that makes you lose weight. In spite of what I tell some of my clients about this con job, they still fork out thousands to other people for this "programme" & don't give any credit to their fitness trainers!! God forbid, do doctors with genuine tertiary qualifications actually buy these placebo (probably water) drops from these "entrepreneurs"?! In case anyone thinks I'm a lone ranger with this opinion,here's some evidence to back up what I'm saying. Happy reading! Human chorionic gonadotrophin and weight loss. A double-blind, placebo-controlled trial. Bosch B, Venter I, Stewart RI, Bertram SR. Source Department of Medical Physiology and Biochemistry, University of Stellenbosch, Parowvallei, CP. Abstract Low-dose human chorionic gonadotrophin (HCG) combined with a severe diet remains a popular treatment for obesity, despite equivocal evidence of its effectiveness. In a double-blind, placebo-controlled study, the effects of HCG on weight loss were compared with placebo injections. Forty obese women (body mass index greater than 30 kg/m2) were placed on the same diet supplying 5,000 kJ per day and received daily intramuscular injections of saline or HCG, 6 days a week for 6 weeks. A psychological profile, hunger level, body circumferences, a fasting blood sample and food records were obtained at the start and end of the study, while body weight was measured weekly. Subjects receiving HCG injections showed no advantages over those on placebo in respect of any of the variables recorded. Furthermore, weight loss on our diet was similar to that on severely restricted intake. We conclude that there is no rationale for the use of HCG injections in the treatment of obesity.

Celebrity Bad Science: Dried Placenta Pills and Oxygen Shots

By Kate Kelland LONDON (Reuters) Dec 28 - Pop guru Simon Cowell carries pocket-sized inhalable oxygen shots, America's "Mad Men" actress January Jones favors dried placenta pills, and British soap star Patsy Palmer rubs coffee granules into her skin. Celebrities rarely shy away from public peddling of dubious ideas about health and science, and 2012 was no exception. In its annual list of the year's worst abuses against science, the Sense About Science (SAS) campaign also named former U.S. presidential candidate Mitt Romney for spreading misinformation about windows on planes, and Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps for false justifications for peeing in the pool. To help set the record straight, SAS, a charity dedicated to helping people make sense of science and evidence, invited qualified scientists to respond to some of the wilder pseudo-scientific claims put about by the rich and famous. It suggested Romney, who wondered aloud in September why aircraft crews don't just open the windows when there's a fire on board, should listen to aeronautical engineer Jakob Whitfield: "Unfortunately, Mitt, opening a window at height wouldn't do much good," the scientist said. "In fact, if you could open a window whilst in flight, the air would rush out...because air moves from the high pressure cabin to the lower pressure outside, probably causing further injury and damage." January Jones's dried placenta pills, which the actress admitted in March she consumed after giving birth, win no favor with Catherine Collins, principal dietician at St George's Hospital in London. "Nutritionally, there's nothing to be gained from eating your placenta - raw, cooked, or dried," Collins said. "Apart from iron, which can be easily found in other dietary choices or supplements, your placenta will provide toxins and other unsavory substances it had successfully prevented from reaching your baby in utero." Gary Moss, a pharmaceutical scientist, patiently points out to Palmer that while caffeine may have an effect on cellulite, rubbing coffee granules into the skin is unlikely to work, since the caffeine can't escape the granules to penetrate the skin. Phelps's claim that it's fine to pee in the pool because "chlorine kills it" is put straight by biochemist Stuart Jones, who reminds him that "urine is essentially sterile so there isn't actually anything to kill in the first place." And for Cowell, Kay Mitchell, a scientist at the Center for Altitude Space and Extreme Environment Medicine, warns that very high levels of oxygen can in fact be toxic - particularly in the lungs, where oxygen levels are highest. "Celebrity comments travel far and fast, so it's important that they talk sense," said Sense About Science's managing director Tracey Brown. "The implausible and frankly dangerous claims about how to avoid cancer, improve skin or lose weight are becoming ever more ridiculous. And unfortunately they have a much higher profile than the research and evidence." To encourage more vigilance among celebrity pseudo-scientists in the future, SAS provided a checklist of "misleading science claims" it suggests should be avoided: * "Immune boosting" - you can't and you don't need to * "Detox" - your liver does this * "Superfood" - there is no such thing, just foods that are high in some nutrients * "Oxygenating" - your lungs do this * "Cleansing" - you shouldn't be trying to cleanse anything other than your skin or hair.

Korean threads V-lift

Korean threadlift is a new non-surgical procedure that gives a lift to the face by insertion of dissolvable threads under the skin. The threads are made from PDO (polydioxanone), the same thread material in use for cardiac & other major organ surgery. The threads are approved by the Korean Food & Drug Administration (KFDA). Advantages of this procedure: - Quick 30 minute procedure - Can be done with just local anaesthetic cream - Immediate results seen - Long lasting effect 1-1.5 yrs - Additional effects such as improved skin tone & skin elasticity can also be seen - Threads are resorbable i.e. no permanent foreign material left under the skin Pretty much any body part can be treated - face, neck, buttlift, abdomen, bra bulge lift, front & back armpit lifting Introductory price 50% discount - from RM500.

Starving Yourself May Not Help You Live Longer

Foodies may be delighted by the conclusions of this article. Looks like the human lifespan (at least for primates, anyway) is pre-set. As with all things in life, moderation is key. By Sharon Begley NEW YORK (Reuters) Aug 29 - The longevity diet's premise is seductively simple: cutting your calorie intake well below your usual diet will add years to your life. New research published on Wednesday, however, shows the extreme, emaciating diet doesn't increase lifespan in rhesus monkeys, the closest human relatives to try it in a rigorous, long-running study. While caveats remain, outside experts regarded the findings as definitive, particularly when combined with those from a similar study. "If there's a way to manipulate the human diet to let us live longer, we haven't figured it out yet and it may not exist," said biologist Steven Austad of the University of Texas Health Science Center's Barshop Institute for Longevity and Aging Studies, who wrote an analysis of the study in Nature this week. Since 1934, research has shown that lab rats, mice, yeast, fruit flies and round worms fed 10% to 40% fewer calories than their free-eating peers lived some 30% longer. In some studies, they lived twice as long. Such findings have spawned a growing community of believers who seek better health and longer life in calorie-restricted (CR) diets, as promised in the 2005 book "The Longevity Diet," including 5,000 members of the CR Society International. The research has also prompted companies like Procter & Gamble and Nu Skin Enterprises to develop drugs to mimic the effects of calorie restriction. The new study, from the National Institute on Aging, suggests a surprising disconnect between health and lifespan. It found that most of the 57 calorie-restricted monkeys had healthier hearts and immune systems and lower rates of diabetes, cancer or other ills than the 64 control monkeys. But there was no longevity pay-off. "You can argue that the calorie-restricted animals are healthier," said Austad. "They have better cholesterol profiles, less muscle loss, less disease. But it didn't translate into greater longevity. What we learn from this is you can un-link health and longevity." The NIA study, launched in 1987, is one of two investigating whether eating just 70% of the calories in a standard lab diet extends life in a long-lived primate. The Wisconsin National Primate Research Center's study, begun in 1989, also uses rhesus monkeys, whose physiology, genetics and median lifespan (27 years) are closer to humans than are the rodents in earlier calorie-restriction research. Initial results were promising. In 2006 the NIA group reported that calorie-restricted monkeys had younger-seeming immune systems. Wisconsin reported that after 20 years of eating like birds, the monkeys were less likely to get heart disease, diabetes, cancer and other diseases of aging. They also lived longer: By 2009, 80% of the free-eating Wisconsin monkeys had died of age-related illness, but only 50% of calorie-restricted monkeys had. Those findings, the scientists reported at the time, showed "that CR slows aging in a primate species." Experts on aging have since waited for the NIA to weigh in, and the verdict was a shock: "The calorie-restricted monkeys lived no longer than the other monkeys," NIA's Julie Mattison, who helped lead the study, told Reuters. The oldest animals in each group had the same incidence of tumors, heart disease and general deterioration. While the abstemious monkeys had some improved health markers such as cholesterol and triglyceride levels, Mattison said, "that didn't translate into better survival." The NIA study showed that even monkeys starting calorie restriction early in life, from 1 to 14 years of age, had no lifespan edge over their gourmand peers. With 19 of the 40 monkeys whose eating was restricted starting in youth still alive, the NIA scientists calculated, the chance that they will outlive free-eating monkeys is less than one-tenth of 1%. Perhaps more surprising, health markers were often worse in monkeys that began calorie restriction as young adults than older ones, the opposite of what scientists expected. And more of the animals that started calorie restriction when young died of causes unrelated to aging than did their free-eating peers. "There may be something about calorie restriction that makes animals more susceptible to death from other causes," said Austad. Scientists offered several explanations for why the NIA's findings differ from more encouraging results in the Wisconsin study. The Wisconsin monkeys' diet had seven times the table sugar (28% of calories, like Americans' diets) as the NIA's (4%). The Wisconsin control monkeys also ate however much they wished; the NIA control monkeys ate a fixed amount and, as a result, weighed less. That suggests the longevity diet didn't really extend lifespan in the Wisconsin monkeys: It only seemed to because the control monkeys ate themselves into an early grave. "Comparing calorie restriction to what you think is a normal diet but is in fact an unhealthy diet with too much food and too much sucrose can trip you up," said Austad. "If you keep your control animals to a healthy weight, as the NIA did, a diet that produces extreme emaciation has no further effect on longevity." Most problematic, many of the Wisconsin study's calorie-restricted monkeys died of causes unrelated to aging, such as anesthesia used in some experiments and gastrointestinal bloat. Only by not counting those deaths did the Wisconsin scientists find a statistically significant longevity effect, said Wisconsin's Ricki Colman, a leader of that study. It is too soon to know how the NIA study will affect the development of drugs aimed at replicating calorie restriction's benefits without the hunger pangs. They include mannoheptulose, a compound derived from unripe avocados that "tricks cells into thinking they ate less," said George Roth, CEO of privately held GeroScience. Roth helped launch the NIA study and is a co-author of the new paper. He believes there is still good evidence in favor of calorie restriction, including the Wisconsin study's findings. GeroScience is working with Procter & Gamble to use mannoheptulose as a lifespan-increasing supplement for dogs and hopes to raise money for a clinical trial in people. LifeGen Technologies, co-founded by a leader of the Wisconsin study, is testing a nutraceutical that mimicked some genetic changes seen with calorie restriction in rodents. The company was bought by Nu Skin Enterprises in 2011. The NIA and Wisconsin teams are continuing to collect data to see if calorie restriction suddenly proves more beneficial. "But what I take away from these studies is that extreme emaciation may not be the correct paradigm," said University of Texas biologist Austad. "If I were them (companies or scientists banking on this), I'd be worried."

Liposuction Might Have 'Boomerang' Effect

But exercise kept post-surgical increase in fat around organs at bay, study found June 14, 2012 By Alan Mozes HealthDay Reporter THURSDAY, June 14 (HealthDay News) -- Women who have the popular plastic surgery procedure known as liposuction may be trading one form of fat for another, as a new study reveals that the sudden removal of abdominal fat seems to trigger a buildup of fat around the internal organs. At issue, the Brazilian researchers said, is an apparent trade-off between two kinds of fat, with the removal of "subcutaneous fat" spurring the growth of "visceral fat." Subcutaneous fat, located directly under the skin, is the primary target of liposuction. Visceral fat wraps itself around internal organs, and its accumulation has been strongly linked to a higher risk for diabetes and heart disease. Here's the good news: The same research team found that liposuction patients who adopted an exercise program shortly after surgery both enjoyed the benefits of abdominal fat removal while largely preventing the post-surgical growth of visceral fat. "Importantly, a four-month, supervised exercise program prevented this compensatory visceral fat increase, increased fat-free mass and improved physical capacity and insulin sensitivity," the team, led by Fabiana Benatti from the University of Sao Paulo, reported. Benatti and her colleagues detail the findings in the July issue of the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism. The authors focused on the experience of 36 healthy Brazilian women between the ages of 20 and 35, all of whom underwent abdominal liposuction between 2010 and 2011 in Sao Paulo. None of the women had a body-mass index (BMI) over 30 prior to the procedure, meaning that while they were overweight none was obese. All of the surgeries were also described as being "small-volume" in nature. Two months post-surgery, the women were divided into two groups: the first embarked on a four-month (three times per week) exercise regimen, while the second essentially maintained a sedentary lifestyle. Both groups were deemed to have experienced similar drops in body weight and overall fat mass as a result of their surgery, and both followed comparable diets post-procedure. Those in the exercise group engaged in aerobic and anaerobic (weight training) training through the four-month period. The result: Six months after their operation, neither group had regained fat in the abdominal region that was the target area of the liposuction surgery, leading the team to describe the procedure as "cosmetically efficient." However, patients in the sedentary group experienced a roughly 10 percent increase in visceral fat, equating to what the authors described as a "significant regain of total fat mass." In contrast, those in the exercise group did not. Benatti's team said that it is not yet clear exactly how liposuction raises the risk for visceral fat growth. What is clear, however, is that exercise seems to mitigate that risk. Lona Sandon, an assistant professor of clinical nutrition at the University of Texas Southwestern at Dallas, expressed little surprise with the findings. "You oftentime have this snapback of the fats," she said. "Sure, you can get rid of some of it with surgery. But if you don't change your lifestyle, it doesn't stay away forever. And certainly if you've spent all this money and incurred the risk of undergoing liposuction -- and it's not a risk-free option, by any means -- why wouldn't you want to do what you can to preserve the gain?" "So, no, I don't think it's surprising that exercise helps after surgery," Sandon added. "And in that respect, cardiovascular exercise, in particular, is one of the best ways to go. That means jogging, swimming, biking, roller blading, getting your heart rate up for an extended period of time and burning calories. Even walking helps to decrease visceral fat, even in people who have not had liposuction. And so I would expect it would work the same for people who have had liposuction." Connie Diekman, director of nutrition at Washington University in St. Louis, seconded the notion. "This is a small study," she cautioned. "And it raises the question of how this might play out among women who were significantly more overweight than those included in this study." "But I think there is a very important message here," Diekman added, "in that this study is an example of how you can make a positive change with exercise. It may not ultimately prevent the return of body fat, but clearly it can change its distribution or delay its return. And that is very good news."

Not All Calories Are the Same, New Research Finds

From Heartwire Lisa Nainggolan June 26, 2012 (Boston, Massachusetts) — A small mechanistic study comparing three different eating patterns--a low-fat diet, a low-glycemic-index diet, and a low-carbohydrate diet--has found that participants used up the most energy with the last, but there were metabolic disadvantages to this approach [1]. The findings reinforce the message that a low-glycemic-index diet is best for weight loss and cardiovascular disease prevention and illustrate a novel concept--that not all calories are alike from a metabolic perspective, say Dr Cara B Ebbeling (New Balance Foundation, Obesity Prevention Center, Children's Hospital, Boston, MA) and colleagues in their paper published in the June 27, 2012 issue of the Journal of the Medical Association. Extreme restriction of fat or carbs can have bad effects. Senior author Dr David S Ludwig (New Balance Foundation, Obesity Prevention Center) told heartwire : "Extreme restriction of fat or carbs can have bad effects. The best long-term approach will be to avoid restriction of any major nutrient--either fat or carbohydrate--and instead focus on the quality of nutrients. This is not to say that the number of calories isn't important, but it's now saying we should also pay attention to the quality of those calories. So the argument that the food industry likes to make--that all foods can be part of a healthful diet as long as you watch calories--is really misleading at best. "Relatively unprocessed, low-glycemic-index foods are best, things that our grandmother would recognize. Choose relatively unprocessed foods whenever you can and cut back on white bread, white rice, potato products, prepared breakfast cereals, and, of course, concentrated sugars." The argument that the food industry likes to make--that all foods can be part of a healthful diet as long as you watch calories--is really misleading at best. Dr Arne Astrup (Department of Human Nutrition, University of Copenhagen), who was not involved with the study, said it adds to previous research and demonstrates that "a slight reduction in carbs (and increase in protein) with a focus on low [glycemic-index]/whole-grain carbs and 20% to 30% of calories from protein from shellfish, fish, poultry, dairy, nuts, lentils, and beans is the optimal diet today for weight control and reduction of cardiovascular risks." To this end, Ludwig believes it's time to change recommendations. "Most of the professional nutritional associations continue to feature, expressively or implicitly, targets on fat reduction. Our work--and really many other studies--now suggest that there is absolutely no benefit by selectively targeting fat for reduction." Low-Fat and Low-Carb Diets Both Have Important Downsides The researchers conducted a three-way crossover design feeding study between June 2006 and June 2010 involving 21 overweight and obese young adults in Boston who were recruited by newspaper advertisements and postings. After losing 10% to 15% of body weight during a run-in phase, participants were allocated to a low-fat diet (20% fat, 60% carbohydrate, 20% protein), a low-glycemic-index diet, and a very low-carbohydrate diet (10% carbohydrate, 60% fat, 30% protein) in random order, each for four weeks. The primary outcome was resting energy expenditure with secondary outcomes of total energy expenditure, hormone levels, and metabolic syndrome components. Ludwig notes these type of studies are "difficult to perform," because for each participant there were seven months of feeding, "and that's about the limit you can put a human subject through, so we could only examine each diet for a month at a time." The reduction in resting energy expenditure was greatest with the low-fat diet, intermediate with the low-glycemic-index one, and least with the low-carb diet. The decrease in TEE showed a similar pattern. Those on the low-carb diet burned 350 calories per day more than those on the low-fat one, even though they consumed the same amount of calories on all these diets. "Those on the low-carb diet burned 350 calories per day more than those on the low-fat one, even though they consumed the same amount of calories on all these diets. That's equivalent to one hour of moderate-intensity physical exercise," Ludwig said. And those on the low-glycemic-index diet lost about 150 calories per day more than those on the low-fat one, "equal to about an hour of light physical activity," he added. (Neither total physical activity nor time spent in moderate- to vigorous-intensity physical activity differed among the diets.) But he explained that, as well as energy expenditure, "we also looked at heart disease risk factors, and the two restrictive diets both had important downsides." Strongest Support for Concept That Not All Calories Are the Same With the low-carb diet, the researchers observed increases in CRP, a measure of chronic inflammation, and 24-hour cortisol, the key stress hormone, "suggesting that any initial advantages were eroded over time by these biological stressors," Ludwig notes. And the low-fat diet--as well as resulting in the least energy expenditure--"exacerbated many of the components of the metabolic syndrome, so insulin resistance, triglycerides, and HDL cholesterol were all worse on this diet," he explained. Hence the study, despite its limitations, "provides the strongest support for a novel concept, that all calories are not alike from a metabolic perspective. This has been postulated before, but never shown in this context," Ludwig says. "We are emphasizing mechanisms that underlie how diets affect body weight and saying that this knowledge should be used to design more effective and least-restrictive approaches to weight loss and heart disease prevention. We want to line up biology and behavior. Losing weight is hard enough for anybody. We need every advantage we can get. We've wasted a lot of energy pursuing ineffective approaches like a low-fat diet."

Eating placenta, an age-old practice in China

From www.straitstimes.com SHANGHAI (AFP) - After Ms Wang Lan delivered, she brought home a baby girl and her placenta, which she plans to eat in a soup - adopting an age-old practice in Chinese traditional medicine. The health-giving qualities of placenta are currently creating a buzz in Western countries, where some believe it can help ward off postnatal depression, improve breast milk supply and boost energy levels. But placentophagy - the practice of eating one's placenta after birth - is relatively common in China, where it is thought to have anti-ageing properties, and dates back more than 2,000 years. 'It is in the refrigerator now and I am waiting for my mother to come and cook it to eat. After cleaning, it can be stewed for soup, without that fishy smell,' Ms Wang said, adding she believed it would help her recover from delivery. My comment: Oral placenta pills are now freely available & registered with the Ministry of Health in Malaysia so the prices are quite reasonable (depending on concentration of the active ingredient, prices vary between RM300-600 per month's supply.) & you don't have to put up with the fishy gooey original raw product.